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Self-Help Groups Providing Services: Conflict and Change

Abstract

Since 1963, the lives of thousands of psychiatric patients in the United States have been drastically and dramatically changed by a national policy change to community-based mental health care. Faults in the implementation of that policy have often placed the burden of care for these patients in the hands of their families. Several years ago, a self-help group composed of parents of chronically mentally ill adults founded two small residential facilities for their patient-children. One facility was intended to be an innovative attempt to provide care for this population but quickly became a facility like those established by professionals. The other facility unintentionally pre served the model of the first. This study looks at the development of the par ents' self-help group, the two facilities, and the conflicts that developed because of these attempts to provide formal services to the mentally ill.

Journal

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

(1991)
vol20 no2 pages191-205

Categories

  1. Nonprofit Service Sectors  
  2. Self-help Organizations